First, let's look at how this thing works. This lamp doesn't have a flat wick like you are accustomed to seeing in a kerosene lamp. This lamp has a round wick and a circular flame. To light it, you unscrew the bayonet type fitting on the mantle assembly with the glass chimney attached, light the wick, and reinstall the mantle assembly. Unlike the kerosene lamps you are used to using, the light for this lamp doesn't come off the wick. The flame rises up and heats up the mantle which does all the glowing. The mantle is in the form of a fine, very loosely woven cloth mesh. The first time you light it, it turns into ash but maintains it's shape. You have to remember that it is ash, however. Touch it, and it disintegrates. White gas lanterns have a similar mantle. As the Aladdin mantles cost a fortune compared to Coleman mantles, I tried to figure some way of adapting a Coleman lantern mantle to work with the Aladdin. To make a long story short - Nope, the Coleman mantles are way too fragile.

The most fragile part of the lamp is the mantle, not the wick. Lots of folks order extra wicks but no mantles. I'm sure they are thinking of the flat wick lanterns that have no mantles. The wick should last you a very long time. I have noticed, however, that if the lamp runs out of oil, it will start to burn the wick if you insist on turning it up further and further as the flame dries out the wick. To save your wick, you've got to be sure you don't run the lantern out of fuel.

The chimney is another part of the lamp that's really fragile. My first chimney broke when I tried to ever so very carefully remove it. I couldn't have been more careful, in fact. The one I have now has turned out to be a good one. You might like to have a spare chimney or two as the lamp is worthless without a chimney.

Did you ever wonder why the chimney on the Aladdin is so tall? For the lamp to work correctly, it must have a rather strong draft up through the lamp. The chimney needs to be this high to create a good draw, otherwise the lamp won't work correctly. More about this later.

I've only burned K1 grade kerosene in my lantern. Just like the ad says, it burns smokeless and odorless, but this is once you get it going. They say it will burn with the intensity of a 60 watt bulb. No matter how I trim the wick or try to tweak it, about the best I have been able to get out of mine has been a 40 or 50 watt bulb. But that's me. Maybe you'll have better luck. One day when I was being unusually negative it seemed to be burning unusually dim. I pulled out a candle, lit it and put it next to the operating lamp. Then I turned down the lamp just to see how the candle did by comparison. Well, there was no comparison, the lamp was so much brighter. I could have had 50 candles out there and they wouldn't have been as bright as the lamp.

One successful experiment I did to try and get the lamp to burn brighter was to extend the chimney on the lamp, thus increasing the draft. I did this by taking a sheet of aluminum foil and rolling it into a tube, then setting it on top of the chimney. The added draft makes my lamp burn noticeably brighter.

I've heard people say you can cook on this thing. I have to say that it does put out a lot of heat for a lamp. But you surely can't put even a cup on top of the chimney to cook with, or it would block the air from rising up through the tube, stopping the lamp from burning correctly. I understand the company makes a stand the lamp sits under. You can sit a pot on it. But then I wonder, why doesn't one just get himself a cook stove? A stove would put out ten times as much heat and you wouldn't have to mess around with a stand with the Aladdin, trying to get it to do something it wasn't designed to do.

Bottom line? Yes, the Aladdin has it's problems, but it burns a fuel that will store for years and has more BTUs per gallon than gasoline. Even though the lamp does put out a very small amount of carbon monoxide, it is such a small amount that it's safe to burn it in the house, unlike a white gas lantern. Compared to a candle, or a regular oil lamp, it puts out a huge amount light. And that's why I got three more of them for my family.